


(Well, this is) Life in Color

by asuralucier



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: A Celebration of Life, Character Study, Gen, Memory, ambiguous Arthur/Eames, discussion of said suicide, mostly platonic Ariadne/Eames, not so platonic Ariadne/Arthur, postfilm, suicide of minor character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-17 20:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15469704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: In which Ariadne disappears, Eames is horrible at sailing, and dumpling carts in Taipei disrupt traffic. Such is human nature.





	1. not all who wander

Robert Fischer Jr. was dead.

According to intimate sources close to the family, he'd lost his way not long after his father's death, after the surprising dissolution of Fischer-Morrow which coincided just so with Fischer Sr.’s very public funeral held in a Catholic church in downtown Los Angeles. Fischer the Younger was in naturally in attendance. He'd made a rousing speech about how sons didn't have to be like their fathers. The speech had gone to the press, and the media circus had branded it inappropriate.

(Speaking of: a man had been in attendance and not stood out. The man, after all, owned immaculate suits in various shades of funeral black. Arthur had never told anyone, but there was a lingering irony in the place that [Robert] Maurice Sr. chose to have his funeral -- the Church of Immaculate Conception.)

Tabloids across several continents eagerly tore apart Fischer’s other ventures not long after: a green energy incentive, a string of nightclubs, a liberal newspaper based in New York City with offices snug near Wall Street. In the end, he'd nowhere else to turn but drink. His dead father's shadow chased him everywhere and one lousy little dream he had on a private plane to Los Angeles meant nothing.

Nothing at all.

Robert Fischer Jr. had been found in some nondescript hotel room in Sydney with a noose made out of a silk tie, and an empty bottle of bourbon. He’d left a note. It’d read simply: _I tried._

 

Eames has always been a reasonably lucky person. And even when he wasn't reasonably lucky, he made his own luck. However, when bad luck hits him, it usually hits him in spades.

When Ariadne disappears, two days after the news about Fischer hit the Internet and major news outlets, no one is surprised. Except Arthur, a little bit. But then again, Arthur is a very special human being, one whose head is so consumed by details that sometimes the oddest things eak out from his synapses never to return. Arthur, Eames decides, is brilliant at details when they are imprinted upon the walls of a room or written on a whiteboard. He is oddly nonsensical about picking up on details they have to do with another person (translation: maybe he doesn’t give a shit). They end up having to scramble for a new architect for a job in Hong Kong and they do find someone on short notice, but it’s a bad draw all around. Edwin Chau doesn't have Ariadne's eye for detail or her creativity and Eames still has very real nightmares about having his face blown off with an assault rifle. Multiple times.

Cobb is not in the business anymore. He's sworn off dreamshare until his kids get to college, and that's not such a bad thing. But Eames misses Cobb. Cobb is slightly insane, but good at his job, just like his wife had been before him.

And Eames misses Ariadne too, because she's not insane and good at her job. She's a rare find in the business. An absolute gem stained and then refined by notions of normalcy.

“...I think you should find her,” Arthur is standing by the window of their hotel suite in Munich wearing only a shirt. Eames' shirt, which means it's loose. It’s been eight months without Ariadne and both of them are looking worse for wear. No amount of distraction can fix that.

“Why me?”

“Because you're usually the one that gets shot up whenever an architect fucks us over?” Arthur barely turns his head to look at him. “I'm quicker on my feet, we both know that. And --”

Eames decides the resentment he feels towards Arthur's quick(er) feet can wait, “...And?”

“And I was the one she kind of, um...left.” Arthur shifts his focus almost wistfully back to the window. “Ariadne won’t want to see me.”

Eames kind of knows what’s going on with Ariadne and Arthur. Only kind of, because he has eyes and for all their want of privacy Ariadne and Arthur are bad with certain secrets. It’s almost cute.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am,” Arthur nods. “I’ll book you a flight to Paris first thing. First class, think of it as a goodwill gesture.”

 

Of course Arthur knows she’s in Paris. What’s more, Ariadne likely knows that Arthur knows that she is in Paris. Before Eames can dwell too much on what Arthur is dragging him into, he dives right in and goes to Paris.

And yet, she seems surprised to see him.

Ariadne looks older -- not “more grown up,” no, because that’s not how Eames tends to think about people. She’s an independent young woman who knows full well how to take care of herself. But she does look older, more sad somehow, and Eames doesn’t think it all has to do with Fischer (or Arthur, for that matter). For one thing, her hair is bright blood red (screaming desperation for a change) and there’s a suspicious start of a tan line around her ring finger, he imagines what the ring might have looked like. Eames can’t see Ariadne as the type of person who’d flaunt around something like a diamond, but then, she’s always surprised him and Arthur has taught her well, the value of privacy.

“Hello, darling.” And she grimaces at him like she hadn’t wanted to be found. She’s certainly living like it. Eames knows that Ariadne was paid handsomely for the inception job and certainly every other job that came after it. It’s not the lack of funds that keep her living in squalor (even if it is Parisian squalor and ergo a step up from all other poverty), it’s guilt. And everything that comes with it.

Eames knows all about guilt.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says, “I told Arthur.”

“I’m not Arthur,” Eames reminds her, wedging his foot smartly in the door. Had this been Arthur, Eames would have broken several toes as a result of such a bold venture. But Ariadne isn’t Arthur, either.

Ariadne sets her jaw and she looks beautiful and stubborn if lost. Or maybe that's just him being unkind, “Eames, don’t make me do this. I just want to be left alone.”

“You are alone,” Eames points out.

Ariadne gives him an exasperated kind of look, “If you’re here I wouldn’t be now, would I?” There’s so much Arthur dripping from that sentence that Eames almost does a double take. But no, it’s still Ariadne.

“Point taken,” he says, acknowledging said point with a nod. “But I’ve come a long way and you’re a lot nicer than the guy I just left for you.”

That makes Ariadne smile; Eames thinks she can’t help herself. “I’ve just made dinner. You can come in.”

“Thank you, darling. I won’t stay long.”

Eames magnanimously toes off his shoes before he steps inside. Neither of them are surprised when he stays a long time.

 

The thing about Eames is that he never takes things too seriously. _C’est la vie_ , _carpe diem_! The cliches pile up.

Ariadne, on the other hand, is also a cliche. Her cliches always seem to coincide with bad decisions and she serves him mushroom stroganoff and tells him she’s become vegetarian.

“Really,” Eames raises a brow. “Since when?”

“Since,” she says simply and doesn’t finish. “Do you want some Grenache? I have a bottle that I opened yesterday.”

“I would love some Grenache,” Eames says, taking a seat at her dining table, which is expertly . “I like this, this is a practically a squatter’s flat but we’re having mushroom stroganoff and Grenache.”

“The Grenache was only five Euros. I think my grocery store cashiers think I am still a student. They keep sneaking me potato chips and chocolate. They say I am too skinny. I always decline and say that it’ll ruin my teeth.” Ariadne portions the strogonoff on plates that are slightly wonky and flashes Eames her teeth. She’s got perfect American teeth which stand in direct reproach to the off-balance plates and this so off-kiltered life she’s chosen to impose on herself.

It’s funny how everything comes and goes in threes.

“Or maybe they are sweet on you,” Eames teases. “Especially since.” Since she was single? Since she was complicated? The possibilities were endless. Eames’ brain, which feeds relentlessly on possible multitudes, hungers for the answers unforthcoming.

Ariadne fixes him with a rather sour look and plonks his plate of strogonoff in front of him. She then fills up their glasses with Grenache and gives him the glass that’s only half full rather than almost filled to the brim.

“Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s unladylike.”

Ariadne might have wanted to be alone, taking refuge in her well-sculpted and exactly-measured front of poverty, but Eames knows she isn’t alone. The ghosts aren’t far behind; he can practically see Arthur loping in behind the tips of her fingers and the gulp of red barely keeps him at bay.

 

“I don’t build anymore,” Ariadne sits very calmly on the edge of the couch she has made up for him. The sofa is only a loveseat and as soon as she leaves, Eames will move to the floor, but that seems implicitly rude.

“I’m not saying build, darling. I know how much you’re worth.”

“That’s almost flattering.”

“It’s meant to be,” Eames presses on. “I’m not saying build to run me like a rat. I’m saying remember. That it’s not all bad.”

Her shoulders tense, as if he’s driven a gun into her shoulder blades, “Cobb told me not to do it. Remember, or build from memory. He says it’s.”

“I think we’re far enough from Cobb,” Eames offers. “If anything, we’ve got Arthur as a conduit.”

Ariadne laughs.

He tells her to build anywhere she likes, and Ariadne chooses Taipei. It’s not a place that is hers, and he supposes he’s just the slightest bit disappointed, but Eames has learned the long, and rather sordid way, not to ask for the moon. This, it’s a good start; it gets her thinking, not so much being afraid of what’s in her own head. When he puts his hand on her shoulder, she turns and squints at him.

“I could have sworn I imagined you in something from Dunhill,” Ariadne says, poking the orange paisley fabric that Eames is wearing. “What is _this_?”

“It’s paisley, love,” says Eames. “Don’t make that face. Only one person in the world is allowed to make that face, and am I glad that it isn’t you. Weren’t you building?”

He supposes it should be strange, and maybe vaguely incestuous too, but he’s okay with it. However, Taipei isn’t Eames’ favorite city, not by a long shot. He’s only ever liked it because. Well, he thinks it ought to be obvious. But, the food’s not bad. Eames can admit he’s missed the food in Taipei a little.

Ariadne looks a little uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s not the same for her. Of course it’s not. Even Arthur is not that blasé about all this, and Arthur is pretty blasé.

“Eames --”

“Never mind,” it occurs to him that he should probably apologise, but he’s not the type to apologise for liking what he likes. It is what it is, and as long as Eames can live with it, he doubts that anything else matters.

Ariadne moves on, down the street from the 101, she raises another skyscraper with clear glass windows. and it goes up. Up higher than even the 101. The glass makes it glisten in the sunlight and it’s almost blinding. While she’s doing that, Eames amuses himself by inventing food vendors with different kinds of dumplings and most (if not all) of them set out to disturb traffic. Such is human nature.

Ariadne gives him another look as car horns honk angrily in the background, “If you’re just going to do that, then I’m not going to play with you anymore, Mr. Eames.”

Her words sound almost fond, but Eames knows her enough to pick up the cues, to know that she means business.

“FIne, I’m not going to do it anymore. Please. Build to your heart’s content.” When a vendor comes up to him to give him a sort of dirty look, Eames smiles beatifically at him and snags a sweet pork bun off the stand.

 

Ariadne’s Taipei is neater, warmer somehow than Eames remembers. Mopeds form a perfect queue in front of a blinking traffic light. They eat from Eames’ wayward dumpling carts and they weave in and out from the crowd of pedestrian traffic. It’s also blistering, blistering hot, and they duck into a cafe, where a gaggle of girls heading to cram school are sipping colorful coffees with ungodly amounts of toppings.

Her first reaction is, “Arthur hates this stuff.”

“Which naturally means we absolutely have to get one,” Eames returns with a charming smile and he goes up to order in perfect Mandarin Chinese.

Ariadne stares at him, “I forget you speak Chinese.”

The cashier behind the counter obediently keys in his order and yells it back to someone else running a blender and doesn’t even seem surprised like he would have otherwise been topside. Eames shrugs, “I speak a little. It’s very good for business. Obviously since we’re under, I can get away with sounding better.”

She laughs, “I bet Arthur makes you practice.”

“He does,” Eames makes a face.

Someone hands Ariadne her drink; it’s purple and it’s got whipped cream on top and also chocolate sprinkles. She takes a sip out of a bright pink straw. “Whatever works, right?”

“That’s right,” Eames fixes her with a sunny smile. “I get rewarded afterwards too. That's my favorite part.”

Ariadne doesn’t miss a beat and she rolls her eyes, “Totally didn’t need to know that, Eames.”

 

Three days later, Eames builds Ariadne Oxford. It’s only fair.

“I think,” Ariadne says, looking warm and delightful in a light caramel sweater, dark slacks, and a bright red umbrella. It rains a lot in Oxford, and the city is beautiful in the fall. “I think you didn’t go to Oxford.”

“But I could have,” Eames smiles, mostly unbothered looking over the bridges,. “My brother went to Oxford. So did my sisters, and my father. I was the family runt.” He doesn’t know why he’s telling her all this. Perhaps because neither Arthur nor Eames are the men she’d thought they’d be. He doesn’t want to change that, but then again, he wants to. He thinks about telling her that he does have a 2:2 in psychology (because it’s unrealistic to forge firsts _all_ the time) and a first in art history from Oxford the second time he’d tried his hand at this uni thing, but Ariadne could have called bullshit and she’d be right.

For a long time, she doesn’t speak. “I went to Oxford once. But I didn’t remember it being like this. It was summer, for me. My parents took me.”

“...Show me?”

Ariadne turns her eyes away from him, and instead, she looks over at the riverbanks, where two little boys are muddying their knees near the edge of the water, trying to get a paper boat to float. It doesn’t really float except sideways. The upside to all this is that neither boy looks particularly bothered.

Then she turns to him again and says, “Why do I get the feeling that you’ve had a horrible childhood?”

“Because,” Eames shrugs. “I don’t know if I’d call it horrible, but it was unconventional.” There’s a lot more he can say about that, but he doesn’t think she’d be interested. “I _am_ a little horrible when it comes to sailing, though. Funny, innit? Sailing was probably the most normal part of my life, and I muck it up. Used to capsize all the time.”

That makes her laugh, really laugh and the sound bleeds into springtime. And it makes Eames smug. He likes Ariadne’s laugh and he thinks it suits her much more than moping or guilt, or the loneliness she has tried so hard to impose on herself. But he isn’t smug enough to wonder if Ariadne has ever found her way to this sort of laughter with someone like Arthur. Eames was sure the other man had a sense of humor under there in his iron skin, but so far, he hadn’t had any luck.

Anyway, it’s a small matter, Eames adored them both in equal measure.

After a moment, he tugs at her hand, “Now come on, love. Your Oxford.”

The boys are gone, and the boat is still sideways. Ariadne looks down at their joined hands. She looks unsure, but she doesn’t let go. “You have to close your eyes.”

Eames does. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel the world shit around him. There are new smells; it’s humid and hot; and someone just whizzed by him yelling in a distinctly American accent (“Dude, just look at this!”). He opens his eyes and he thinks he knows this place. And then he laughs.

“This is...Ariadne, this is _tourist_ Oxford. This is awful.”

Ariadne gives him a disgruntled look, “What’d you expect? We were tourists, and we were in Oxford. I was _ten_.”

Eames puts an arm around her shoulders and places a light kiss to her forehead, and he’s only a little surprised that she doesn’t flinch. They’re standing right outside of Christ Church, and there’s a queue leading inside. There’s also an impressive line for the ice cream stand and, well. Let’s be honest, ice cream is pretty great, but he doubts ice cream can beat Harry Potter.

“I see you like ice cream.”

Ariadne makes a face, “We didn’t go in. Course I read the books and was a little obsessed, but it took a lot of planning for us to come here and Dad complained about how much it cost. So we had ice cream instead. Three scoops.”

“Fuck the currency exchange,” Eames agrees. “Don’t suppose you want some ice cream.”


	2. are lost

It’s another week before they get to the heart of the matter. 

Ariadne is clearly a morning person. By eight in the morning, there’s coffee, tea, and breakfast (runny eggs, toast) laid out in the kitchen. But she is wearing only one sock, and Eames wonders if she’s doing that to mock him. It’s her right; he’s not going to resent her for it. Another thing he’s certainly curious about is if she’d always been this way, or if the people Ariadne deigned important to her had in a sense taken bits of her and now she has no choice but to live with herself as fragments of other people. 

“What would it take to get you to leave?” Then, “Tea or coffee? I’ve got both.” 

Thanks to Arthur, (because it always comes back to Arthur, doesn’t it?) Eames now takes coffee over tea about eight times out of ten. If she notices, Ariadne says nothing. “I’ll be here as long as it takes.” 

“As long as it takes to what? I told you I was done. Done with all of that, with you.” Although the last two words sound a lot less angry than they should be. 

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Eames says. He doesn’t have to remind Ariadne how he takes his coffee either. She tips a generous dash of milk into his mug and pushes it across the table and foregos the sugar. “Thank you, darling.” 

Ariadne doesn’t give an inch. In fact, she now wears the expression that Arthur does sometimes, when he’s realized his mistake, but also has no choice but to double-down. 

“But it _was_ like this. And it _is_ like this. And a man died because of what we did. There’s nothing like this out there, Eames, but I didn’t want to become a -- a _criminal_.”

“If that was true, you could have refused from the get-go,” Eames points out. “You’re a smart girl. Even if Cobb didn’t quite manage to spell it out for you, you should have known that there was going to be. Well. Moral ambiguity, moral ambiguity involved by the shedload.” That’s the kindest way Eames can think of to put it. Ariadne looks like she’s just on the edge, the last thing he wants to do is push her over to a place where she doesn’t want to go (or better yet, has no business going).

In Eames’ humble opinion, “criminal,” or any variant of the word thereof, is one of the most terrible words to say aloud, probably right up there with syphilis. It’s like one admits to it and recoils from it as the same time. It is a word simultaneously denies and affirms what you most want to get away from. Eames, for one, never thinks of himself as a “criminal” per se. Once he’d been called a dream bandit. He’d liked that, despite himself. 

“Men have always died from what we do, Ariadne. And women too, I suppose, but there’s a reason we they call you lot the fairer sex.” For himself, Eames can think of at least five people who have, and they’d really all been men. It’d bothered him a little at first, because it’s cliche as all fuck, but Eames really does believe in free love and world peace and all that, but he’s come to realise that such a worldview is unrealistic and painful to keep up. So now he makes do, as long as he isn’t directly responsible for the death itself (which he isn’t, since Fischer hung himself with a tie) then he’ll get past it somehow. 

“I know that,” Ariadne shakes her head. “But it doesn’t mean I can wake up the next morning and be okay with it.” It sounds like she’s accusing him of something. 

“I’m not okay with it,” and it stings a little to admit that, but it seems important. It will get her to trust him again. They’ve been dreaming together, though Eames isn’t stupid. If Ariadne has recoiled herself into Arthur’s skin it means too, that she understands the nature of their PASIV-related endeavors as not an exercise in trust, but rather an indulgence, a luxuriant guilt-free selfish jaunt into somewhere and then back again, “But, I will be. Eventually.” Eames thinks that; he knows that. It’s how things have always been. 

Ariadne goes to pour her own cup of coffee. She mixes in a sedated amount of cream and doesn’t add any sugar. This surprises Eames. 

“...Eventually. How long is that?” 

“It depends, I suppose. For me, not terribly long. There’s a lot of pragmatism that goes on. Something else I’ve learnt from Arthur, I think.” 

She buys that, because she doesn’t press. But then Ariadne asks, “And Arthur?” There’s probably a lot that Ariadne could have said to that, but Eames likes (or perhaps should be concerned about) that _and Arthur_ covers almost all the bases. 

And Arthur. Yeah well, Eames wonders. Arthur is not one to expound unnecessarily on his feelings or his feelings towards people he’s shot and wounded or killed both in and out of a dream. One of the most admirable things about Arthur is that he tends to do what’s necessary, what needs to get done, personal feelings notwithstanding. It’s a rare quality possessed by very few men, and Eames doesn’t think even Arthur knows. Because that’s not something you know, you just simply do. Once you have the wherewithal to forego certain part of yourself, maybe you go on living, but always just in monochrome. 

“I’ve never asked him.” That seems like a much safer answer. 

“Because you’ve never wanted to know?” 

“In our business, you’d want to know everything,” he reminds her. “But...yeah, I suppose. In a strange way. Don’t suppose there’s any more eggs? I’m weirdly peckish this morning.” It’s probably because he’s expecting sausage and bacon, all that good stuff. 

Ariadne doesn’t look as if she’s happy with the answer he’s given, but she just turns and serves him another another plate of eggs and toast, with a side garnish of more disapproval. Eames wishes there was bacon. It would be funny, if what finally does him in and drives him from Paris is Ariadne’s newfound love for greens rather than anything else. 

Eames sighs, “Is there anything I could say to make you feel better? Like the fact that he was his father’s son to the bitter end. Most of us don’t get to realize that sort of thing so neatly.” 

That makes her pause, probably because Ariadne hadn’t expected him to say that; any other time, Eames might have felt smug, but he _can’t_ now. So he just looks at her. Ariadne shifts from one foot to the other. 

“...I don’t know. Will you tell me it’s going to get better?” 

Eames says nothing for a long moment. There’s a second where he doesn’t really believe the words coming out of his mouth; at least, not for her. Ariadne isn’t really like them, and Eames doesn’t ever wish that kind of misfortune on her. 

“...It’s going to get better, Ariadne. I promise.” 

She doesn’t believe him, not exactly, and Eames can’t blame her. 

Ariadne waits a beat, “...More coffee?” 

“That’d be wonderful,” Eames slides his cup forward. It’s not what he’d been hoping for; he’s not going to lie, but at least it’s a start. 

 

When people are post-coital, they tend to say _things_. Even people who are as wound up as Arthur say things. Maybe it’s the only way that people like Arthur can. Because sex is honest, even for dishonest people like themselves. So when Ariadne builds her old house, nestled between a quaint little park and...a castle, Eames is mostly not very surprised. He’s surprised at the grandiosity of it, certainly, and the sheer decadence that doesn’t seem quite _her_ , and yet there is something in Ariadne’s face. It’s called the truth, the way it can’t seem to help itself sometimes, just seeping from the pores of her skin.

“A castle, really?” he deadpans. It’s to keep up appearances, obviously. 

“Oh, shut up you,” Ariadne taps him severely on the arm. “It’s pretty, okay? I saw it once in a magazine. It was in Quebec, so right next door, and I kept asking my parents if we could visit. Of course, this was around the time when they’d started to fight a lot, so. They’d gotten better over time, but we’d never got to see the castle.” She has to take a minute, but then she recovers.

“I went by myself, you know, before I left for Paris, but it wasn’t the same, especially after they’d turned it into a hotel. Do you want to go in?” 

“Please,” he offers her his arm, and after a moment, Ariadne takes it. She pushes open the doors of the castle and they find themselves in a hotel lobby. The whole setting vaguely reminds him of Arthur’s favourite hotel in Rome. The receptionists are all wearing impressively tight pencil skirts. Eames might even be inclined to think that Or maybe it _is_ Rome. It’s not as if Arthur doesn’t take Ariadne places. Or maybe this is just a place that’s hers, that doesn’t have any of Arthur’s paranoia coloring the place. No nooks or secrets or codexes or (in moments of inane desperation) a weird gun stash. Just...

After a moment, Eames says, “It’s lovely. A bit commercial, but I see the appeal.”

She doesn’t even bother rolling her eyes. 

“We can sit down at the bar,” Ariadne gestures. “It’s stocked.” 

 

They do sit down. Some waiter in an impeccably pressed server uniform serves them colourful drinks that taste a little too fruity. But Eames doesn’t say anything. 

“Are you never going to ask me?” 

“...About?” 

She nods towards the pale band of skin around her ring finger, “This. You’re always staring at it. It’s starting to creep me out.” 

“Is it?” Eames quickly flicks his eyes away, “I didn’t notice. But I suppose it’s because it’s. It’s something else I get from Arthur, I guess.” 

“Ew?” Ariadne wrinkles her nose over the line of her drink. Given how extravagant this place is, because it _is_ extravagant on top of being stained by little-girl memory. Eames thinks that little-girl memories mostly supercede little-boy memories, in that one includes all sorts of memories in color, and the other that simply include cherry-picked details on a spectrum of “cool.” To those who might think he’s being facetious (really, just one person), Eames doesn’t mind admitting that being “cool” was important to him once. Now he bucks the trend willy-nilly. Else, how could he be surprised, much less imaginative? 

“Well, for your tact, I’ll tell you that this,”Ariadne taps her naked finger. “It wasn’t Arthur.” 

“I’m oddly relieved,” says Eames. “If only because I can tell myself that I’m not going mental.” 

“I don’t understand?” 

“The two of you,” Eames draws a listless half-arc with his pointer finger and follows from her gaze less so than he’s actually directing it. “Are really very bad at secrets. Or, at least the ones you claim to think are unimportant.” It’s always a little odd, even to speak in an American accent -- the r’s are too harsh, he always has to pay attention to them, and the syllables flowing next to each other seem somehow more stuttered and stubborn at the tip of his tongue. And yet Eames can mostly manage a decent take of Midwestern smooth when he really puts his mind to it.

This -- _this_ is different. 

“Oh, _shit_.” Ariadne’s eyes widen. For a moment, Eames thinks she’s impressed (everyone ought to be, really, of his Arthur-impression.) For one thing, he doesn’t exactly get to practice it in context and so yes, even _Eames_ is impressed as anything and pleased as punch when the forge goes off without a hitch.

“Okay, that. That is creepy, stop that.”

“Why not?” Eames ribs her in Arthur’s voice. “I’m the one just crashing under the way of all this stiffness anyway. Man needs a massage, urgently.” 

Ariadne shuts her eyes and keeps them closed, “Do you ever.”

“Ever.”

She pauses, “You know.” 

And yes, Eames does know, “We tried once. Perhaps he’s nowhere near as narcissistic as any of us thinks. It was an experience.”

“I bet.” 

“I’m sure you’d love to know all the details, darling, but gentlemen really don’t kiss and tell. Besides,” Eames reaches to touch her knee with Arthur’s hand and she recoils. “You’re avoiding the subject.” 

“My mind is scalded _forever_ ,” she says, covering her face. Eames can imagine her scrunch her eyes closed even tighter. 

“I only ask because I think you want to tell me. You’re bursting with it.” Eames says with his own voice. 

Ariadne peeks out at him between her fingers and blows air in Eames’ general direction. “...I really don’t know what you want me to say? His name was Roy. He was a car mechanic. Taught me how to take an engine apart and how to hotwire a car,” she laughs and pauses here to shrug. But it’s one of those shrugs that are meant to deflect and perpetuate dishonesty rather than to tell the truth. She laughs, and the sound is nearly Arthur-like again in its not-very-niceness. “My God, Eames, I was so far gone by then. Some Tom, Dick, or Harry got me with _Bonnie and Clyde_. That could be the stupidest thing. We married in Vegas.” 

Maybe Eames on a different sliding scale, but he finds the Bonnie and Clyde poke quite flattering (he really just a fatalist romantic at heart, and he needs the right person along for the ride. He is not ruling out that he has or hasn’t found him or her -- flexibility is the first necessity for any forger) “I don’t know, darling. Vegas sounds preposterous to me, excepting the presence of an Elvis impersonator.”

She smiles, wanly, “We did have one. His wig was terrible. He sang out of tune. Later we bought him a drink as husband and wife and he told us that he was studying to become a math teacher.” 

“No.” 

Ariadne says,“I can still surprise you?” 

“I didn’t think that was ever in question, Ariadne.” 

Something in her expression shifts, and Ariadne manages the paradoxical, and yet most amazing thing of falling apart again and coming together in the same breath. Like a snake shedding skin or, more accurately, a flower shedding worn petals for new ones.

Nearly like magic. 

She reaches out to take his hand, and Eames squeezes her fingers, “...There’s really nothing quite like it, is there.” 

“No,” he says, even as there isn’t anything to really agree with. “There isn’t.” 

 

“...Are you watching her sleep?” Is apparently more important to Arthur than the obligatory hellos. That’s fine too, really. Eames, completely understands. He’s not a man with a lot of time and worry coming out of his ears. He’s got no choice but to prioritize. “Because if I swear to God, if she is…” 

Eames is -- he’s sleeping (or trying to) in the same bed as Ariadne. It doesn’t mean anything, but her bed is too large, and she wouldn’t hear of him taking the couch. (“It’s been weeks, Eames, you might as well stop being polite. One of these days this couch will do your back in. It happens to the best of us. Especially if you seem adventurous.”)

He is going to ignore that last part. Ariadne is fast imagining him to be a person he profoundly _isn’t_ , and they have, after all, all got firsthand experience, front row seats to what happens, when a man is forced to be someone else. No, it’s much better for someone to toddle along as themselves, if a bit unhappily. 

But he’s definitely not watching her sleep. It’s not in him, and it _is_ a little discomforting to think of her as one of _them_ , that she could become one of them. All but a walking zombie, who forgets names, faces, only to recall them because pragmatism demands it so. 

She stirs next to him, and Eames flinches, “She’s sleeping normally. No drugs. Or whatever. She is just grieving.”

“But there isn’t time,” Arthur says. “There’s a job. That’s why we’re doing this. It’s Belarus, we’re going to freeze our asses off, but at least be safe.” 

Eames gets up from the bed and readjusts the thin duvet around her shoulders. She doesn’t move. 

“Arthur.”

“What.” A distant cackling sound distorts Arthur’s voice, making it sound more wired than it already is.

“It would not kill you to remember. A splash of red, a hint of blue. Don’t you remember what it means to see color?” 

“I,” Arthur hesitates a beat too long; Eames thinks the beat nearly becomes poignant. It’s amazing what little details, what silence can do. “I’m busy. I have to go.” 

And that, like everything else, is a start. First there was God, and then there was the Word. 

 

Eames puts it off; for a day or two, but then it’s eight in the morning again, and Ariadne’s still wearing one sock. She eyes him and says, “...Did Arthur call about a job?” 

“How do you know?” He hedges.

“I heard you talking,” Ariadne says. “I’ve usually been taking Ambien. But I don’t when you’re around.”

“ ‘S always about a job,” says Eames, and think that could have come out better. More smooth, somehow. “With him.” 

“You don’t give him enough credit,” Ariadne says, and shoves a generous portion of omelettes sprinkled with chives on his plate. “He’s probably busy. Who knows, a masked gang with semi-autos can be chasing him this very minute. It also occurs to me that his life is always exciting. Unexpected.”

“A triumph,” Eames adds over the top of his coffee. The warm steam tickles his skin.

On cue, his mobile rings and vibrates its way ever excitedly towards the edge of her dining room table. 

After a moment, Ariadne picks up the phone. Her expression is a river unsure of where it might end up, “ -- Hey. Arthur? Hi, it’s. Yeah. It’s good to hear from you too.” In the pauses of their conversation, she twists strands of bright red split ends around her finger, as if, Eames thinks, summoning up the estranged colors of memory. 

“Yeah, so. I was wondering if you had some time to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading :).

**Author's Note:**

> Something from my hard drive in 2011. I'm actually rather proud of how this turned out, so thought I'd share it.


End file.
